I’ve earned my keep. Ta-ta!

US Gamer recently posted an excellent retro-review of Final Fantasy 6 3 as part of the build-up for the hilariously unavailable SNES Classic. It’s an entertaining write-up, and I encourage you to take a moment to read it. If you haven’t played Final Fantasy 6 3, then you are depriving yourself of one of the best RPGs available from any period and on any platform. [Editor’s Note: Please don’t purchase the FF6 mobile or Steam versions if possible because they really screwed up the sprites on those versions. Support the non-cringe worthy versions where possible]

The article got me thinking about how the game is completely unbalanced and broken in many ways and also why that really doesn’t matter. I don’t care if the game is unbalanced if it is still fun to play, and the unusual breaks in the game’s code are a lot of fun to exploit. I once used a walk-through-walls code using the good old fashioned game genie in order to have Locke retain his “merchant” costume. I was curious what would happen, and, to my delight, Locke maintained the costume throughout the play through. While attempting to exploit the game in a desperate attempt to keep the ghost characters from the Phantom Train, I somehow broke the game so badly that the town would jump forward and backwards through the game’s timeline when I entered buildings. I would enter an earthquake-damaged town, enter the inn, and be transported a year backwards in the plot to where the town was completely intact.

Despite spending many summers trying to break this game, I never knew that you could “finish” the game by having all of the characters simply abandon the plot. It has been over twenty years since it came out, yet a story told with 16 bit sprites, a big world, and a lot of heart (plus code that is mostly duct tape and bubble gum) still puts a smile on my face and provides inspiration. There’s no other game like Final Fantasy 6.